Why not the X-33?

[darthdavid]

Ok so NASA needs something to replace the clunker that the space shuttle is. It was to be the X-33 but they scrapped it. Now I understand it had some rather severe technical difficulties. Would it be A)Cheaper and/or B)Better than the other designs on the table to go back down the X-33 route, possibly incorporating what we've learned since it's cancellation into a production vehicle that would be derived from it?

[kheegster]

This is the top of my head, but the X-33 was cancelled because they couldn't build a fuel tank that could hold the liquid hydrogen fuel required by the spacecraft. So the cancellation was at least partially due to technical reasons.

And if IIRC, the got rid of all the hardware after the program was cancelled, so it would be difficult to get it back on track again.

[kheegster]

Also, the X-33 was intended to be an unmanned testbed for a single-stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicle. It was envisaged that a manned spacecraft could only come into service in the 2010s. As it is, they need a shuttle replacement real bad, so they'll want to take a more conventional route in the new design.

[Kettch]

This is the top of my head, but the X-33 was cancelled because they couldn't build a fuel tank that could hold the liquid hydrogen fuel required by the spacecraft. So the cancellation was at least partially due to technical reasons.

And if IIRC, the got rid of all the hardware after the program was cancelled, so it would be difficult to get it back on track again.

Lockheed decided to try a composite tank insead of reliable Al. Al was in the plans for the venture star (the X33 big brother)'s fuel tanks. Both composite tanks failed, & they considered going w/ aluminium. Then the $$ ran out.

There were also general problems w/ weight, stability & building the engines. The tanks were just the most specatular failures.

[Patrick Degan]

Fraught with technical and design problems and too complex by half for the basic job of getting people into orbit. I liked the X-33/Venture-Star myself until I started reading about it in detail. In retrospect, this thing would probably have been as big an operational failure as the current shuttle in terms of the mission required for it.

Basically, it's taken NASA all these years to start realising that maybe things like Apollo or Soyuz aren't such an obsolecent concept after all.

[wilfulton]

Now if they could develop spacecraft powered by hot air, the sky would no longer be the limit.